Alas, miracles on ice happen only so often. When Zach Parise took his leap in to the corner boards to celebrate his objective with 24.4 seconds left that would send the gold medal game between the United States and Canada in to overtime, it might have been the moment they took two of the greatest leaps an American hockey player can make — in to the country’s sporting consciousness.No matter that the game, which ended with Sidney Crosby’s overtime objective as well as a 3-2 victory for Canada, was the most watched hockey game in the United States since the 1980 Olympics. Or that Parise, who had two goals and two assists and was selected to the all-tournament team, embodied that American archetype — the gritty, find-a-way underdog.
“I had my headphones on,” Parise said Tuesday, hours before the Devils resumed their N.H.L. schedule with a 4-3 win against the Sharks. “There were different times when people started clapping, but I didn’t catch who they were cheering at.”
So when Parise boarded a plane Monday to San Jose from the Vancouver Games with one United States Olympians, his Devils teammate Jamie Langenbrunner and Joe Pavelski of the San Jose Sharks, they did so very unnoticed. It was not until an announcement by a flight attendant that the two players received an ovation. Or at least they thinks so.
As Langenbrunner pondered the possibility that the Olympics had elevated the status of American hockey players, they figured that they and Parise might still be able to eat dinner uninterrupted.
As plenty of Olympians returned to work around the league, it was not easy for the Canadian and American teams’ players to shake the notion that they had been part of something enduring. The Canadians channeled the expectations — and the exhilaration — of their hockey-mad country. The Americans could feel that if it wasn’t Lake Placid in 1980, it wasn’t bad.
“When you’re in Vancouver, you’re in a small bit of a bubble, actually,” said Langenbrunner, the United States captain. “You understand what’s going on, but you’re trying to stay focused on what you’re doing. I don’t think you receive a full appreciation until you get out. They were nice from Day 1, and they take a lot of pride in that. They were the only people who believed they could win going in, and they came up two objective short.”
The Sharks’ two members of Team Canada grinned through any fatigue they might have felt as they posed for photographers with their gold medals.
Sitting alongside them was Pavelski, who took some ribbing from his teammates. It did not go unnoticed that the Olympics created some odd bedfellows. Players were shooting, scoring and checking against their N.H.L. teammates.
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